The loud ovation and applause that greeted the singers, players and conductor Dwight Oltman at the end of Saturday night's performance of J. S. Bach's “Passion According to St. John” in Kulas Hall's Gamble Auditorium were well-earned, but there was plainly in it a large measure of appreciation for Oltman's long tenure as director of the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival. This year marks his 39th year at the helm, and his last; Oltman retires at the end of the school year and relinquishes his directorship of the Festival to a new (and as-yet unnamed) leader.

The Festival itself is now 82 years old, and has been a fixture on northeast Ohio's music scene for as long as this writer has been observing it. Its reputation as an exemplar of Bach performance has only grown through the years; Saturday evening's performance demonstrated why.

Oltman assembled a line-up of outstanding soloists of international reputation, including baritone Christopheren Nomura as Jesus, bass-baritone Daniel Lichti as Peter and Pilate and, most notably, Rufus Müller in the taxing role of the Evangelist. In the contemplative arias, soprano Meredith Hall, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Lane and tenor Colin Balzer were effective and mostly satisfying. (Lichti also took on the bass arias.)

The chamber orchestra was also generally fine, with nice contributions by viola da gambist Catherina Meints, flutists Kaleb Chesnic and George Pope, and oboists Danna Sundet and Justine Myers. Nicole Keller provided subtle but effective continuo on the chamber organ.

The real stars of the evening, however, were on the risers behind the orchestra. The Bach Festival Chorus, made up of Baldwin Wallace students, performed with an energy, precision and commitment to the music that more mature choruses would certainly envy.

In the St. John Passion, Bach gives the chorus a dramatic role, variously singing moving chorales and inhabiting the angry crowd of rabble and high priests calling for Jesus to be crucified. Their outbursts of “Away with him, crucify him!” were brilliant and hair-raising.

British tenor Müller has earned a reputation as one of the finest Evangelists of his generation, and his performance Saturday night proved it. His is a flexible voice, effortlessly lovely throughout its range, even at its highest reaches, and he brought dramatic flair and an intimacy with the audience as he narrated the events of the Passion.

Bass-baritone Nomura concentrated all his dramatic sensibilities into his singing, remaining visually impassive but investing his rich baritone with great emotion; in his rendering of Jesus's last words, “It is finished,” Nomura brought a world of pathos to the tiny three-word phrase.

Aria soloists were equally good, with tenor Balzer and bass Lichti performing with great skill and intelligence. Soprano Hall, well-known on the local scene for her many appearances with Apollo's Fire, presented her usual crystalline timbres and operatic sensibilities. Mezzo-soprano Lane has a dark voice, well-suited to the story of the Passion, though her lowest range did not project as well as it might have.

Oltman conducted with a sure hand, shaping the chorales with sensitivity to the text, and bringing fire, born of long experience with Bach's music, to the dramatic passages. At the end of the Passion, conductor and soloists were called to the stage three times to receive the thunderous accolades. On the third call, Oltman held up Bach's score before the cheering crowd, a fitting acknowledgment of the master architect of the evening's sublime experience.

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